Immigration Rewrite Down to Details With Disputes Over

April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Senators working on a rewrite of
U.S. immigration law have resolved some of their most
contentious issues, putting them within reach of unveiling
legislation as soon as next week.

The bipartisan group of eight senators settled disputes
over visa caps and wage levels for a farmworker program, devised
a proposal to enhance border security and agreed to details of a
path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented
workers in the U.S., according to senators and people familiar
with the talks.

“I feel like we’ve come together in a fashion that will
hold and that we’ll have a good product to submit to the Senate
for their consideration,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South
Carolina Republican who is part of the negotiating group.
“People will have a chance to amend it, they will certainly
have a chance to read it, they’ll have a chance to make it
better or try to kill it. But I think we’re going to produce a
product that I will be proud of.”

In a sign that a final product is near, the group canceled
a planned meeting yesterday, and a person familiar with the
talks said only staff-level work and bill-drafting remains. The
group plans to unveil its plan April 16, according to a Senate
aide familiar with negotiations unauthorized to speak publicly.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a
Vermont Democrat, said after meeting with members of the group
April 9 that he expects to “have legislative language to
review” in time for an April 17 hearing.

Trumka ‘Optimistic’

“I wouldn’t say it’s a done deal yet, but I’m very
optimistic,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor
group, said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg
Television’s Peter Cook for “Capitol Gains,” airing April 14.
“The Gang of Eight has done some very, very good work. That
makes me optimistic, but optimism isn’t a plan.”

Once the legislation is unveiled, it will encounter
challenges to passage. Senate leaders have pledged an open
amendment process in the Judiciary Committee, as well as on the
Senate floor.

Opponents, such as Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama
Republican who has said the measure will cost U.S. workers jobs
and damage the economy, are planning to do what they can to
thwart the Senate group’s proposal.

Advocates of revising immigration law acknowledge that
getting the 60 votes needed to push a bill through the Senate
will be difficult, and that passing the legislation in the
Republican-controlled House will be even tougher.

Obama Priority

Still, political momentum is working in favor of an
overhaul. President Barack Obama has made an immigration-law
rewrite a second-term priority, and almost two-thirds of
Americans, 64 percent, support a citizenship path, according to
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted April 5-8.

In a question measuring intensity on the issue, the poll
found a six-point gap between those who strongly support
allowing those in the U.S. illegally to gain citizenship -- 29
percent -- and those who oppose it -- 35 percent.

Members of the Senate group over the past several days have
said parts of their proposal that have been resolved or are
almost complete, including the farmworker program.

“We have a wage-and-cap agreement,” Senator Dianne
Feinstein, a California Democrat and advocate of revamping the
program for allocating visas to farm workers, said yesterday in
an interview at the Capitol.

Wage Rates

Agricultural labor has been one of the more contentious
areas for senators to work out in an immigration rewrite
proposal. Those representing larger growers, led by the American
Farm Bureau Federation, the biggest U.S. farmer group, have
pushed for more visas and lower wage rates than the United
Farmworkers Union wants. The farmworkers union is the immigrant-worker advocacy group founded by Cesar Chavez.

While the Farm Bureau has said a flexible visa program is
necessary to allow enough visas so that harvest workforces are
adequate, the farmworkers’ union has said too large of a program
would push down wages and encourage employer abuses.

Feinstein declined to provide details of the accord, saying
only that she participated in six hours of talks April 10 on the
topic with other senators, farm groups and workers’ advocates.

John McCain, an Arizona Republican who is part of the
Senate group, said yesterday that the group was “largely in
agreement,” on a farmworker proposal, adding that there “may
be some details that still need to be worked out.”

Senators also have finished work on a section providing
visas for foreigners who receive a graduate degree from a U.S.
university in a high-skilled field such as engineering,
mathematics or science, McCain said.

‘Wrapping’ Up

“We are wrapping everything up,” McCain said.

The Senate group’s proposal probably will require a trade-off between more job-related visas and an annual allotment of
65,000 visas for adult siblings of naturalized U.S. citizens.

The senators also have agreed on border-protection
principles essential to Republican approval of any plan,
according to people familiar with the talks. The accord links
mandates for tougher border control to opening a pathway to
citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

The question of border control remains central to any
agreement for Republicans, whose party has courted support from
its core voters with demands for a crackdown on illegal
immigration and deportation of undocumented workers.

“It will be fair, it will be hard, and I think the
Republican Party has changed on this issue,” Graham said of the
agreed-to citizenship path provisions.

Hispanic Voters

Since November, when exit polls showed Obama backed by 71
percent of the Hispanic voters as he won re-election, Republican
leaders have called for their party to embrace a more
sympathetic approach toward immigration in an attempt to re-engage the fastest-growing part of the nation’s electorate.

At the same time, Republicans such as Senator Marco Rubio
of Florida have remained mindful of that base of supporters who
have viewed any relief for undocumented immigrants as a form of
amnesty for law-breakers.

Rubio and the other senators in the bipartisan group have
tentatively agreed to concepts that draw a connection between
strengthening the border and granting new rights to the
undocumented, according to two people familiar with the
senators’ discussions who asked to not be identified in
describing the talks.

The principles of the accord would require continuous
surveillance of 100 percent of the border, with a 90 percent
effectiveness rate for enforcement in high-risk sectors, one
person familiar with the talks said. The Homeland Security
Department would receive $3 billion and have six months to draft
and implement a five-year plan to achieve those goals.

No immigrants could gain provisional legal status until the
plan is in place, the person said.

The agency would have no leeway to begin granting permanent
residency status until tougher border controls and a system of
verifying that companies aren’t employing undocumented workers
are in place. Also, the government would have to establish an
entry-exit system to ensure that people who enter the U.S. on
visas leave when they are supposed to.